With all the publicity about international tax avoidance by America’s largest corporations it comes as no surprise that smaller businesses (and individual taxpayers) see this as being grossly unfair. The American Sustainable Business Council says that, “each of America’s small businesses on average picks up the tab for $3,067 to cover the costs of tax avoidance by U.S multinational corporations playing the offshore profit-shifting game.”

Although New Zealand’s multinationals don’t have exactly the same tax avoidance/mitigation opportunities as their US counterparts; such practices are common here too. As with the US, the cost of the tax practices of New Zealand’s large companies is borne by everyone else in the economy.